


The Solider & The Ballerina

by PlatypusCore



Category: Black Widow - Fandom, Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers (game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26394547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlatypusCore/pseuds/PlatypusCore
Summary: After years apart Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff must navigate their reunion as friends, allies, and something more they had thought they had more time to explore. Now, they must relearn what they mean to each other while protecting the newest Avenger from the sins of the past.
Relationships: natasha romanov &steve rogers
Kudos: 6





	1. Just a Day

Most people she does not like, but he is not most people. Her job relies on noticing everything-the way he sets his jaw during debriefings, the taut muscles that reach behind his back for his shield during a workout session and come away empty because he never wants the shield to become a crutch (or hit her in the face, as if she could ever miss a block, but he worries anyway) the flex of his fingers and how he cracks his neck in the quinjet before drops- but here it is too much. There are so many people being casually loud and overly excited and the same tells in combat are now just tourists and winners of contests wanting to meet the Avengers. It's harder to spy when your name is on banners and billboards but that's how Stark likes it and so now she hovers on the outside of the helicarrier, avoiding the booths and exhibits she will see her own face on. She remembers walking through last night before opening, Steve critically eyeing her massive cut out and shaking his head, but refusing to meet his own eyes. He feels a similar way about himself, that all this is unnecessary, but he wanted to make sure they hadn't sanded down the hard muscles under her suit, softened her curves to appear more appealing and feminine, made her less threatening. She did not need to glance at his cut out to feel disappointed they couldn't quite capture the sense of responsibility he carried on his shoulders.... or the way most of his suits enhanced his assets. The thought makes her smile, almost. They are too professional to let anything distract them during a mission, but good enough to still be able to notice things about each other. 

She wishes she could turn her brain off, surrounded by security and soccer moms who truly mean no harm, but if she could she wouldn't be her. With him, it is not that the noise disappears; there is almost more sensory input. But she can focus the data, pinpoint the connections and analyze them better. Protecting the team, him...it gives her a target. The same way it is easier to find something when you know what to look for, she can sort these people into the harmless everyday citizens they are. A few of the moms and older teenagers glance at Steve in a way that almost makes her smirk internally. She has not felt competitive since she went on pointe in the Red Room. The photograph he keeps of Peggy in his room is a part of his life she joins once a year in a little East Coast cemetery or a quiet moment on the jet, when a gentle brush of her fingers can call him back into the present. He has had a past (wholely more innocent than her own, but she will not take that away from him) the same way she has had her own. They do not acknowledge anything that occurs in the present once the moment has passed. The born leader who always has a tactic and the spy with contingencies do not plan for the future. 

She finds him near his own exhibit, which would be strange, but he hands a comic to a girl and she understands almost immediately. Steve would spend a whole day taking pictures with children who needed someone, even though he super ran from professional photographers and paparazzi. He had disliked the competitive nature of collecting comics to reach the VIP balcony, and despite his public persona would help anyone he thought deserved to be there by cheating his way through this. She cracks a smile for real now. And they see him as the boring boy scout while he slides right past them, unnoticed. The little shit. And speaking of shits, Tarleton is losing his over near the stage. If she doesn't stop Steve he will rescue children all day. 

She strides over casually; he's not known for his people skills and he may need backup, even though she's curious about the conversation as well. Neither are really "kid people", and it prickles up her spine. Maybe he is, but he can't be. He holds on to the idea with the rest of his past dreams. But it's not one they can share the same way they could a vacation in the tropics somewhere. She does not like kids because they are harder to read and harder to leave, complicating and distracting even the best in her various fields. She could not be a good spy and a good mother, could not balance the two roles that both call for full attention and commitment. Steve could not walk away from being a hero if he tried, could not stand to leave his son at a baseball game alone if the world was ending, and in that unsustainable balance he never makes a choice. It is always 'maybe, someday' though the words started coming less once he started c--she stops herself. People leave all the time, and one day she will too, when the world has been saved enough they are no longer desperate for someone with as much red in her ledger. Cap will continue to lead a team, and well, and she will do what she can and has always done best in the shadows. 

"Hey, Cap, we should head to the stage. Tarleton is losing his nerve." She approaches silently and yet he still knows she's there, his body moving almost imperceptibly to accommodate her need for space. He used to relax slightly when she was around, reassured to have the backup, but now his ease seems to stem from different reasons and she has disapproved, more than once, of how easily he would blow their cover. They never made a conscious decision to hide, just as they never really officially chose to start, and in the silence that most people find unbearable they find it easier to breathe. She slides into work mode easily, just from using his name. He picks up on her stance, the dancer poised to begin, the only one who makes more references to ballet than spy movies when the group needs her to do a thing only she can do. They don't have to describe what they need her to do, just what they need, and she would get it, but Steve makes it a point to make her more than the spy, the shadow. She saw a half-finished sketch in his book once of a ballerina with red hair and didn't speak to him for almost a day. She wasn't mad, she just couldn't. He wants to help her find the goodness of dance, to remind her it was more than training for other things, that there is something in it for her she can claim for her own. But it is muscle memory and instinct. You corner an animal and it will attack. 

"Have you seen Thor, he should be here by now?" He does not realize yet, and if he hasn't yet he never will, that the two of them are not like the rest. They check in. They coordinate. They fan out and search together, or rendezvous on time at locations they previously chose together. Thor will appear when he appears and she will have nothing to do with it. She saw his hammer fly through the air a little bit ago, but not the man who wielded it. He doesn't tell her where he's going or when he'll be back even if it's just to the commissary, especially not if he's popping his head into her room just to ask if she wants anything. Thor is as good of a teammate as a god can be, and he will be on stage relatively on time. He may even be there on time because no one can help but listen to Cap. But the kid has already answered. 

It's not necessarily a helpful answer- she's over=eager to help and excited, but hasn't noticed it yet- but it's not not helpful either. The last known location of an agent is always where you look first; the kid's face falls as she reaches the end of her fact spilling and Nat suddenly wants to reassure her. But the reassurance Nat would want is not what a normal kid probably needs; she wouldn't want the mistake pointed out, she would want to learn from it and go again, and so she asks Steve who the kid is. Captain America introducing you, thanking you for your help, that's what kids want, not her. And when he says she's one of the contestants Nat immediately brightens. These are people she helped choose, helped research. There is data she knows and facts she can use. And they have something in common, sort of. Nat has no idea what teen girls are into anymore, not really, but she's an Avenger and this girl is into Avengers. Cap continues on and she's Kamala Khan, lizard expert, the girl who actually gave her things to do and a real personality. All the entries mention Widow -she's the one woman on the team- but none of them knew how to write her. They were kids, they shouldn't have had to get into the trauma and the perfectionism, the drive to set aside feelings and perform above expectations. But Kamala knew how to write for her, how to give her the right kind of guns to hold and the right kind of moves to do that were helpful but not overpowered. Kamala's Widow had been poised and perfect, cool, but not in a bad way. Kamala's Widow would fist bump, so Nat offers her knuckles. And then the real Nat, not Kamala or any of the other contestants' idea of her, signals to Steve it's time to go, and tells the kid she'll see her around. That's what Nat would have wanted. Another chance, but no promises. 

They are meant to enter the stage from behind the scenes, and both exhale visibly when they cross into the backstage area. 

"She stood up to bullies," Steve explained, his mind still on Kamala and not any of the hundreds of other things he has stressed and prepped for today. It's important to him that she knows, and she does. Cap has never liked a bully. She's always admired he's kept time to disapprove when the villains in his world got so much larger. She focuses on the little details that keep them alive, that get missions done, and he focuses on the themes, the big dramatic speeches that rally the agents and keep the massive egos on task. But the middle point, the people needing help or doing wrong, that's where they meet. 

"Sounds like someone else I know," she keeps her tone light, just in case, and brushes her gloved fingers across his arm. If anyone looks, they'll think she's just tidying up his suit. But he knows better, and in this moment he does not care, so as her fingers trail away he catches them mid-air, reflexes so fast she could not have stopped him if he tried, grip so strong she could not break out if she wanted to, not that he lets her feel any of the strength he is using. She could break out easily and he would not struggle or try to stop her. But the moment hangs and he still holds her hand, stepping closer together and passing through the boundary line she has set for everyone else. 

"I thought you liked that about me," He doesn't flirt the way anyone else does, and she's glad of it. She hears enough cheese from Tony daily. He's always respectful but she knows him well enough to know he questions this ...balance... between them. No matter how many kids will ask him for a photo today inside he is still a skinny asthmatic from Brooklyn who could not get a girl, and he sees her like the dancer in his notebook, graceful and beautiful and uninterested. She does not know the words that will reassure him and so she keeps her wrist in his solid grip, hopes it's enough. He looks around their corner of the helicarrier, and she can tell from his expression they are truly alone. There's a calculatedness to his look, something almost mischievous. The tactician is plotting again. But she is trained to predict moves and counteract them and so she stretches up on her toes, like a ballerina, and kisses him softly on his cheek, right near the corner of his mouth, so that if he turns his head at all he can kiss her back. She holds her breath inside, though anyone but him would not be able to tell, because at any moment they could be over, but before she can finish the fear internally he has turned just so and captured her mouth with his. 

She is grateful, afterwards, it was one of their better kisses. She hopes it said enough and he knew at the end. But she will never know. She kicks at the rubble without noticing the pain. In all of her thoughts, she had never thought he would be the one to leave her. The others cannot bear the loss of their captain, their friend, their leader; she cannot bear any of this at all.


	2. Mystery Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Game spoilers below
> 
> (but like, if you've seen the trailer you know the spoiler)

Mystery Box

When he tries to hand her the simple wooden box she thinks it’s important for other reasons; some sort of official Avengers business. She opens the lid expecting some sort of a flash drive or microchip, any scrap of intelligence she can get her hands on to do what she does best. The gears begin to turn and the soft chime of gentle music starts, the ballerina poised perfectly forever on tiny feet. 

“You got me a music box.” It’s question and answer at once, and almost a surprise. Steve is not like the others, not constantly cracking jokes and taking things less seriously than he should. She likes to sit beside him in the jet before drops, when both can be quiet and still and concentrate. But they don’t talk much to each other, not outside of work, really. There is a familiar comfort to standing near each other during debriefs around the war table and strategy sessions that she feels almost drawn to.   
“It reminded me of you.” He nods at the little figurine, still whirling gracefully. “Something to make your room a little more like a home without intruding.” He raises his eyes from the dancing girl to Natasha’s quarters, looking around. The paint is still fresh on the helicarrier, though she knows Tony has already managed to trash his room. She had protested them giving her a room as it seemed a little presumptuous; she had been a SHIELD agent for years and could make do with anything, anywhere. To have a space of her own, somewhat, made her feel unsettled. It was nice to have safe places to unwind and relax, but she had always made her own safe houses and secret spots away from SHIELD, no matter how well they meant. This was a safe spot; one of the safest in the world, but claiming it for her own would make her unsafe. It would leave her attached, vulnerable. 

“I know it’s not a home, and you’re okay with that. And I know how that feels. But you may get stuck here a lot and I wanted you to have something nice for if you start feeling like you’re too much an Avenger and not your own person.” He gives the box a little twist in the air with his wrists and dangles it in her direction. It’s the most they’ve ever talked about work, without really talking about work. 

“Does that happen to you?” Cap is so comfortable leading the team, fighting, she forgets why they sit together in silence. She forgets sometimes that fighting is the only time things haven’t changed so much he needs helpful explainers, whole extra pages in reports that cover a city’s economy during the Superbowl to explain why it is such a target. He spends their time between missions sight-seeing old Catholic churches and visits VFW’s and cemeteries she’s never stopped to realize he might not actually find those enjoyable. 

“I haven’t felt like my own person since I woke up.” He shrugs and pulls the box back. “Sometimes I feel like I’m asleep now, like it can’t be real.”   
Nat reaches for the box impulsively, so quick he doesn’t have time to fight her for it, and cradles it in her hands. 

“I’ve never had one before.” She shakes her head but pushes through the wall she has made, the one that keeps others from hearing about the Red Room and not knowing what to say or how to treat her. “They didn’t really do keepsakes in the Red Room and I’m not really good at staying in one place to keep them.” She glances around her room and suddenly the fresh paint seems a little less sterile and a little more meaningful. They knew they could have left it unpainted and she would have been fine with it. But they chose to do it anyway. “I feel like it’s something you get from your dad.”

Whatever Steve had thought she would say, it was not that. His nose scrunches up in a mix of surprise and maybe horror. His shoulders start to sag.   
“Do I seem that old to-”

She cuts him off in a hurry, desperate to reassure him, sorry to have forgotten the extra connotations, fumbling to get the box down on her table and using her hands to wave off the realization before he can finish having it. “I didn’t mean it like that.” 

He buries his face in his hands and then wipes his forehead, moves further back to ruffle up his hair. His face is red, now, when he’s embarrassed, not in the field where he barely breaks a sweat. 

“I was antiquing and I saw it, it looked nice, like something I could’ve seen back then, and I-”

She hugs him. She’s not good at hugging, she doesn’t like it, and she’s stiff and out of practice. But it gets him to stop talking, and there’s something so raw in how he says back then, a place he’s missing and can never get back to because it felt like home to him. He’s not her and he doesn’t know how to detach, or keep himself from attaching, and so he’s homesick and coping by trying to help her. It’s the most unprofessional thing she’s ever seen from an operative and if any of the Avengers heard they would laugh, let alone if they saw her now, and so she buries her face in his chest to avoid seeing his expression. She’s always known how bulky he was, his shoulders almost twice the size of her waist, and pressing her face against him feels a little like hugging a rock, but then tentatively his arms go around her and he bends into it a little and she’s surprised at how soft he seems. 

“Um, okay?” It’s an answer and question at once and he’s so confused but trying not to sound like he’s complaining, so she pulls back. 

“You seemed like you needed it.” She shrugs toward the box. “Plus it seemed like I owed you.”

“You don’t seem like the hugging type.” A lesser man would have let it go, a wiser man left it unsaid. She likes that Steve wants the answers the way he seeks clarity in every intelligence report, even as she dislikes it now that she’s the subject. 

“I’m not, so don’t get used to it. But I felt…” She finally looks at him directly and has to choke back a laugh. In his stress he has undone his hair, running the perfect part he maintains so religiously. She knows it’s a routine thing, an Army thing, a comfort thing, and she doesn’t know how to tell him it’s sticking up at the wrong angle. “Your hair, you-” and then, because he’s already crossed the line with a music box and she’s ruined it with a hug, she stands up on her tiptoes and tries to brush it back into place. He’s holding his breath and she’s not sure if the hair is that important or he’s stressed about the total collapse of personal space again. And she knows how that feels so when she’s finished she steps back, farther back than she was before the hug, retreating to her table and her box. “I fixed it. I think.” And she has, it’s exactly how it looked before, because she knows how it always looks, but his hair is his thing the way her gun box is hers, and it doesn’t matter if it’s how it should be if she didn’t do it herself.   
“I trust you,” he says, and she can tell he’s going to get to the mirror in his room as fast as he politely can, and so she does an awkward approximation of a smile and starts to say thank you again, so that he can leave, but the intercom crackles and JARVIS is telling them Nick Fury will be arriving on the helicarrier in a half hour for an inspection (of SHIELD, not them) of the team, the new ship, the Avengers Initiative. 

“I’ll… let you get ready,” He says and starts to step backwards out of the room. But she smiles, for real, and follows him out.

“I’m always ready.”

“It was more of a being polite thing.” He nods at her and takes one step towards his room, but then pauses, and steps back. “I’m ready too, actually.”  
He probably sleeps on an already made bed, she thinks to herself, imagining him in a corner somewhere still in uniform, using the shield like a pillow. 

“I’m not good with friends,” She warns him, but it’s more to protect herself. To keep his expectations lowered, to prepare that she will be around one day and not the next, to explain why she compared him to a dad and then tried to hug him like a regular girl would, maybe, she doesn’t know. But she likes what their version of friends could be, already is--long silences where they can be content, noticing the other, not needing anything.

“You think I am?” He jerks his head at the helicarrier corridor. “I live here. I like doing this.” She realizes as they walk in comfortable silence he didn’t try to refix his hair. 

“I think,” she says quietly, “I do too.”

Later, he accidentally sends it flying. She had moved it to the shelf above her bed -to keep it out of the way, not for sentimental reasons- and he’s looking for somewhere- anywhere- he can grip right now. She’s not paying attention to (anything, really) the hollow wooden crack against the back of the wall but he pauses, looks away from her, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“Natasha,” 

She follows his gaze to her shelf, doesn’t particularly care in the moment. “It’s fine, keep going,”

“-I-”

“Steve,” she grits her teeth, tightens the legs she can kill with a little more, “keep going.” 

Afterwards, she makes sure both their hair is fixed and he is long gone before she takes her box from the shelf and looks it over. There’s one small crack in the wood in the back she almost likes. It makes it more hers. But the ballerina has wobbled off her spring and tilts at an angle, ungracefully. She brings it carefully down the hall to the Science Lab.   
“Bruce?” She asks tentatively. “Can I borrow your toolkit?”

Bruce looks up over his glasses in confusion. “It’s mostly for hobbies, Tony has all the good stuff in his lab-” His eyes rest on the little wood box she cradles so carefully. 

“Yours will be fine.” She looks down at her little ballerina. It’s not the first dancer Steve has thrown off course. “It’s just a little project.” Her voice softens barely, in spite of herself, and Bruce is too polite to comment, if he even notices. 

“I can fix it if it’s a little project, yeah.” He comes around from his table and holds out his hands, waiting for permission to acknowledge the box in her hands. “If you want.”  
She debates. She’s perfectly capable of doing it herself, but it’s not just anyone-or Tony- asking. Surely these people have earned a little trust, a little bit of friendship by now. She knows internally they have, feels like she has to trick herself into opening up, and so she shoves the box into his hands before she can change her mind.

“My ballerina, the spring got a little bent and I… don’t want to use my pliers, she’d get dirty.”

Bruce raises the box up to eye level, examines it. “Should be something I can do, yeah. You want me to try and hide the crack too?”

“No,” Natasha shakes her head. “That’s a part of it now.”

“If you’re sure,” He’s talking to himself, not to her, she can tell from his voice change. “I don’t have to do much, just put a little glue to keep it together, won’t change what’s already there at all.”

It’s the first time she’s seen her old room in years. Someone had clearly tried to dust it before she arrived- she suspects Bruce- but otherwise, it’s exactly how she left it. Her music box sits on the table and she traces her finger along the old crack, resisting the urge to fling it off the ship because it is too painful a reminder; all she has. She wonders if Steve would still be alive if she had let Bruce glue the crack, if it would have been enough to keep them together.


	3. 8 Hours (Pt 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have now gotten both Cap and Widow telling Kamala she needs 8 hours of sleep, and I refuse to believe this is not the creators leaving me breadcrumbs. And then it...sort of spiraled.

8 hours is the rule, but this morning she breaks it, laying in silence and staring at the ceiling for hours instead of falling asleep. They had decided the rule almost simultaneously, both staring at Tony slowly pushing a full cup of coffee off his workshop table for... unknowable reasons.

"I'm a cat," he muttered to himself, then looking up into thin air, "is that anything, JARVIS?"

"No sir," JARVIS replied. Natasha had stood up suddenly, making eye contact with Steve, and they made their way out into the hall.

"When was the last time you saw him sleep?" Steve had asked, jerking his head back towards the lab.

"On purpose or when he fell asleep in his suit earlier during the briefing?"

Steve had paused. "That wasn't on purpose?"

Natasha had shaken her head. "He's an idiot, but he's not an idiot. He's also clearly not sleeping."

"I can't imagine working on anything less than 

8 hours"

"8 hours"

They had smiled at each other, the strange, unfamiliar smile of friends and not work colleagues, and Natasha had let the moment linger a little longer and then muttered something about replacing Tony's coffee and Cap had nodded. He was good at letting her pass by, not holding her in place for too long or expecting too much.

So she found herself staring at the ceiling afterward, still feeling his fingers curled around her arm, stopping her in an empty hallway. 

"Nat," He'd said, suddenly rough and familiar, smelling like sweat and still covered in grime from the mission. They'd returned hours ago but she'd been rushed to surgery, an almost routine bullet extraction at this point, and nothing Tony's nanites wouldn't help her recover from. There had been plenty of time to shower, but Steve hadn't taken it, too busy pacing outside the room.

"I'm fine, Steve," She wanted to reassure him, but everything felt wrong and she was on edge. She hadn't gotten shot accidentally in a while, let alone on purpose, but her padded shoulder was a better target than the underside of his arm, where the suit had no reinforcing to leave him room to swing his arm as widely as he needed. She was too close to him, and not just literally. It was a costly mistake to make, forgetting he was faster than she was, and she'd have to be an idiot to make it again. So she'd informed Maria she was going low to recover, hole herself up in a safe house somewhere, anywhere safe from Steve. 

"I know you are," He did not loosen his grip, even though she had flexed her arm and attempted to pull away. The contact reminded her of early missions, before she had fully learned to calm herself and control her fear, her excitement, her need to do well. "I'm not fine with what happened."

And while Natasha agreed with him she'd be damned if her first Steve Rogers lecture was going to be over getting shot for him. She pulled up quick, chin raised, eyebrows locked and loaded, as open a stance as one could make in a crowded hallway next to the mass of muscles and heat that was Captain America. She was good at not being the center of attention in rooms when she needed to be, though Steve had always managed to notice her anyway, and it made the moments she reminded him who she was all the more powerful. "I made a judgment call. I'd make it again if I had to." She met his gaze directly, defiant, arguing against her own opinion just to prove him wrong. The _ungratefulness_. "My teammate left himself exposed and I covered."

He always worked his jaw when he got emotional, left side when he was angry, right side when he was upset. His first reaction had been on the right, she'd observed, but it switched to the left now. Good, she thought, let him get riled up. Her gaze lingered and she subconsciously followed the line towards his mouth, catching herself staring at his lips. "Your teammate can take bullets a lot better than you, Widow."

Oh, they were using work names now? That got under her skin more than the bullet had, though she couldn't exactly admit why. It was not good to get emotional back, not good to escalate a situation, but the adrenaline that had saved him earlier, the thought he was in danger, now left him the only good target. She just wanted to push a bit more, and didn't she deserve it? She'd been shot. 

"Didn't realize sacrificing yourself was a competition, Cap," she snapped, shifting her stance to take back some of the control of her arm, not necessarily ready to fight but somewhat in the mood. The motion brought her torso into his personal space, her hips rotating enough to line up with his. He growled at her and slammed them both into the wall, careful with her shoulder but rough everywhere else. It was not a sexual pin, exactly, but it wasn't not one. 

"So we're fighting now, are we?" 

"Wouldn't be much of a fight." She kept her tone light and tried very hard not to look at his mouth or buck her hips. He towered over her, almost twice as wide and nearly a half-foot taller, but she was letting him dominate her into the corner. Or at least, letting herself let him. She was mostly resisting the urge to stand up a little taller and shift her leg a little to make things more enjoyable. 

"I could take you."

"You could do a lot to me Steve," she said, so busy analyzing every move and counter move available she forgot to guard her mouth. He collapsed into her almost immediately, nose inches from hers, both arms curved protectively around her and bracing himself against the wall, his knee making the decision for them and adjusting her stance and slightly lifting her off the ground. 

"You want me to?" He breathed, barely a question. He was asking for permission for more than one thing. This was not just about one time in a hallway. This was about crossing a line that had never been crossed, no matter how often lately she had found herself wondering...she let her head fall back against the wall, exposing her neck, but opened her eyes enough to glare at him. 

"You do owe me." She whispered back, hedging on whether to let him. But he pulled away, leaving her feeling almost disappointed, and she realized with something almost like fear she was about to let him. 

"Not if... not if it's going to get you hurt. Not for me." He shook his head. "I won't risk anything happening to you."

But Natasha had noticed the balance had shifted, not physically, but for her. She had not allowed herself to think about him, this, them; had not let herself make a decision. She had learned, just now, what her decision would be, and she knew like any good assassin you had to follow the momentum.

She shoved him, as hard as she could, catching him off guard, even as he stumbled backward he tried to brace to catch her shoulder, not himself. He hit the other wall hard enough to make a sound and she followed right behind him, standing up on her tiptoes and getting as much in his face as she could. His resolve was crumbling, she could feel it, but she wanted to linger in this moment, the first where she could let herself feel about him the way she wanted to. 

"You'd make the same call for the same reason, Steve, and I'd be just as mad at you." She pressed her hands against his chest, pushing him into the wall more. This would only work if she took charge, if she made the move, if she didn't give Steve a chance to worry this wasn't what she wanted. He bent towards her, resting his forehead on hers. 

"Yeah," He admitted. She laughed, just a little, and brushed his nose with hers. "But that's a problem because-" she changed her position a little with a wiggle of her hips and he stopped talking for a moment, looking so tortured she almost felt bad for him. 

"So is going around hiding it and fighting it and being so worried about it someone gets shot."

The pause was so long she almost second guessed herself. But he hooked his hands into her belt loops and clung tightly, desperately, honestly. 

"Yes." He said. "That's a problem too." And then he changed his posture from Captain to Steve completely, slouching against the wall and pulling her with him, holding her against him with a familiarity born of training sessions and late nights waiting in uncomfortable places, like they'd been meeting in hallways for years. "But we're gonna be smart about this. We go to bed, sleep on it, and if we still feel we have to in the morning then we...figure something out." But he buried his face in her collarbone, on her non-injured side, with a sort of relieved gasp she didn't know a person could make. "In a second." 

"Yeah I'm sure you've just been dying to spend some personal time with my shoulder," She muttered, trying to tease him, but he shook his head and let out a muffled noise of... contradiction? Self-control? Frustration? "Hey," she pulled herself back, wrapping her hands around his face and lifting him up, forcing him to look at her. "Are you hiding from me?" Shit, she'd forgotten, this as the most action he'd probably had with a girl since...well, not counting any of the times she hadn't counted... before he went under the ice? 

"I'm trying to behave," He glared at her. "And you're supposed to be resting and not...not..." 

Her hand shot up to the underside of his ear before she could stop herself, barely noticing she had used her bad shoulder. "If you finish that sentence with _seducing me,_ Steve Rogers, so help me God," she relaxed her grip a little and dragged her nails down his neck and brushing her fingers under the collar of his suit. 

He swatted her away and shot her a stern look. "Stop that or it's not gonna heal right."

"Oh, that's your main concern right now?" She laughed him off easily and stepped closer into his embrace, but the look he gave her was dangerous, stilling her movements and sending shockwaves through her body. 

"I'm going to throw you on every surface of this building with one hand and you're going to like it," he muttered through clenched teeth, standing up suddenly and breaking them momentarily apart. She wondered wildly if this was what her spark attacks felt like on someone's organs, and why the hell she was letting it happen to her. "In the morning, if the medic clears you for combat."

She looked around the empty hallway, in the empty wing of the mostly empty building. She nuzzled into his neck, not quite kissing him, but letting her lips touch his skin as she talked. "Is it going to be that dangerous?" He let out a small chuckle and worked his fingers through her hair, his hand almost bigger than her neck, pulling her away from him a little roughly, gently, somehow. 

"You don't take it easy when you're supposed to as it is, Natasha. Eight hours of sleep, you know the rule." He detangles them ever so respectfully, remorsefully, unwillingly, and takes slightly longer strides than he's supposed to down the hall. He's not wrong but he is nervous. Natasha sighs and flexes her shoulder. To be fair, she is on a dose of painkillers, but she knows herself too well to pretend she's not thinking clearly. It would be so easy to blame it on the adrenaline, the drugs, the twinge of her shoulder and a stifling sense of being too attached, too committed to the Avengers. The type of impulse decision that blows you up and out of the room, sends you home safe. Steve is far more dangerous because they say good morning every day, he brings her her coffee made correctly, he will be around the morning after and the next day and there is no room for error. 

She would have taken a bullet for anyone on the team if she had to, but only Steve makes her want to, so she stares at the ceiling of her room until the painkillers wear off and the dull ache comes. She pulls one of Clint's terrible old sweatshirts over the bandages and pads to Steve's door in her bare feet, braid messier than usual on account of her arm. He opens it before she can knock but keeps his arm in the entrance, guarded. He's bracing himself for her to say she's changed her mind, but half-hoping for it. He's shirtless, which is unusual, and she wonders if he couldn't sleep. 

She smiles at him, slow and soft, and a bit embarrassed and he relaxes in spite of himself.

"You're not supposed to be back up yet." He reminds her, looking around the empty hallway, keeping his voice low. 

"I'm on a mission," she replies, matter of factly, and he smiles. 

"Oh boy," he opens the door wider, lets her in. "Do I need debriefed?"

There is a pause as he realizes what he's said sooner than she does. 

"Not tonight," she brushes past him and his comforting shoulders, crawls onto his bed, yawns innocently. She hears his whispered "oh no", turns away to hide her grin. "I couldn't sleep so I came here." His blanket is thick, expensive, non-regulation. She's not surprised he has chosen sleeping as a secret hobby to spoil himself on. He has leaned against a quinjet and slept more than once. It took her a while to notice he does it when he's next to her, that she is the one who makes him feel safe enough to let his guard down and relax. She has fallen asleep beside him as well, once even together, waking up slightly disoriented but not panicking, leaning on each other to stay upright. This is safer for him than kissing, a better way to ease him into the idea without having to acknowledge her own vulnerability here. After all, they've technically done this before. "Don't worry, no kissing, it hasn't been eight hours yet." She yawns for real this time, instantly lulled by his familiar scent on the pillowcase. "I just figured if you wanted us to have a good sleep before deciding anything important this was the best way."

"And people think I'm the best strategist." She rolls over so he can see her grin. He steps closer to the bed but makes no effort to get in. "I want to say, for the record, I trust you with my life but I don't trust you right now at all."

"I'll put it in my file." She rolls back to face the ceiling again, far more ready for bed this time. 

"And I have to brush my teeth tomorrow before we do anything, talking or whatever."

They've lived together for almost three years. She knows this about him, that he gets hot when he's nervous but saw fans as too much electricity just for discomfort, but cannot sleep without the weight of a heavier blanket. 

"'Or whatever, like you weren't listing all the 'surfaces of this building'...are you waiting for me to agree to get in the bed?"

"I am." He hovers at the edge of the bed expectantly, and she knows he will go sleep in a stairwell somewhere before he asks her to leave. 

"I'm tempted to let you suffer, for the record, but," she touches her shoulder and pretends to wince. "Ow,"

"That's the cheapest trick in the book," He complains, but he's already up on the bed covering her hand in his own, slowly easing himself under the cover without disturbing her. She leans on her elbows and stares at him pointedly until he adjusts to a position she likes, and then she curls up beside him and rests her head in the crook of his elbow, drawing patterns across his shoulder.

"Is this behaving?" She asks, bending her head towards him. He laughs and turns his face towards hers, slowly reaching an arm across her and resting it over her side. 

"Ask me in eight hours." 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the new Avengers video game


End file.
